Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about self-loathing progressives. Yeah, I’ve really been letting them have it, to the point that one begins to wonder if I’ve turned on my fellow liberals and become, well, self-loathing about it…
Damn, this is not the kind of irony that I appreciate.
So please allow me to re-aim my cannons at the true villains of American politics: the hardcore right-wingers.
This xenophobic herd of nutjobs has basically taken over the modern Republican Party. And one reason they have been so successful is because of simple human frailty.
I’m talking about self-fulfilling prophecies. As we all know, this is “a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior.”
There are various subsets and versions of self-fulfilling prophecies. But the one that interests me is how stereotypes mingle with this psychological condition to create some rather unpleasant behaviors.
You see, “psychologists have theorized that stereotypes can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, that people internalize stereotype messages, living up — or down — to those expectations.”
We see this with ethnic minority teens who are treated like criminals, when they’ve done nothing wrong. Eventually, a few of them think, “If you’re gonna treat me like a thug, I’m gonna be one.”
Along those lines, we are not supposed to point out that some Trump voters have displayed bigoted behavior, because that just backfires and increases the odds that they will fully embrace racism (yeah, it’s a conundrum).
In essence, whether you call someone a racist or a rapist, enough repetition of the accusation ensures that they will become exactly that.
So how does this bizarre human quirk relate to politics?
Well, as I’ve pointed out, way too many liberals are indeed acting like the angsty wimps that conservatives insist they are.
And I have to admit that a few of my liberal friends openly despise the American flag — and not because of some principled stand against the nation’s flaws or its problematic history. They hate the flag because conservatives have called them America haters for so long that they’ve internalized the label.
But now we’re seeing the reverse.
Conservatives have been called, among other things, racist and misogynist sociopaths who delight in stomping on the poor and wrecking the environment, just for kicks.
And how have Republicans responded to these inflammatory charges?
They have given America a president who draws cheers from Nazis, boasts of his sexual assaults of women, and shows complete disdain for anyone who is not a millionaire.
Well, if that is not embracing a self-fulfilling prophecy, I don’t know what is.
Yes, many commentators are asking why “today’s conservatives feel such antipathy, disregard and hostility toward the poor.”
It’s also fair to ask why the GOP is celebrating old men who openly parade their racism. Or we could ask why blatant sexism within the Republican Party is lauded rather than condemned.
What’s next?
Will Republicans attempt to destroy the environment for no discernable reason?
Will they rush to defend any white men accused of vile behavior, just because liberals have said they are a bunch of sexist, xenophobic bullies with authoritarian tendencies?
How could it get worse? Will the GOP double up and exhibit disdain for both the poor and the elderly at the same time?
Or perhaps they could devastate the environment while simultaneously hurting children?
No, all we needed to see was the GOP health plan, which primarily failed because it wasn’t vicious enough to the needy.
If it keeps going this way, we may have to replace the traditional symbol of the Republican Party, the elephant, with something more appropriate, like this:
Maybe it’s all just a cry for help.
